Forta Firewall: Security and Compliance Infrastructure for Rollups

Key Insights

• Transaction screening volume surged 2,263% from April to July 2025, with Forta Firewall surpassing 271 million total transactions screened and averaging 3.7 million transactions per day in July.
• Forta expanded its rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) footprint through integrations with Conduit, Zeeve, QuickNode, and Gelato, making threat prevention a default option during rollup deployment.
• Protocol-level adoption accelerated via new integrations with Celo and Ink, extending coverage to networks that secure over $700 million in TVL.
• Product capabilities evolved to include phishing detection, blacklist enforcement, Layer-1 Inbox Protection for Arbitrum stack, and real-time monitoring of systemic risks like depegs and bridge imbalances.
• FORT token accessibility improved globally, with recent listings on Bithumb and Upbit enhancing distribution in the Korean market and reinforcing Forta’s growing international relevance.

Primer

Forta Network is a real-time security and compliance infrastructure designed to prevent malicious or unauthorized transactions before they are executed onchain. Launched in 2021 as a decentralized monitoring protocol incubated by OpenZeppelin and backed by a16z and Coinbase Ventures, Forta has since evolved into a core middleware layer for threat detection and policy enforcement in modular blockchain environments. Its flagship product, Forta Firewall, screens transactions at sub-block latency using simulation-based scoring and machine learning.

At the heart of Forta Firewall is FORTRESS, a neural network trained on historical transaction data to identify threats like flash loan exploits, phishing scams, and OFAC-violating transfers. The system assigns each transaction a risk score and intercepts those above a customizable threshold, enabling protocols and rollups to embed real-time security without compromising composability or latency. Transactions flagged by the Firewall are logged to Forta Chain, a custom Layer-3 built on Arbitrum Orbit, which serves as an encrypted, decentralized audit trail.

Forta supports multiple deployment models, including RPC-layer screening, sequencer integration, and proxy contract enforcement, making it adaptable across diverse execution environments. The protocol also offers configurable compliance filters, enabling onchain enforcement of blacklists, regional restrictions, and protocol-specific rules.

Forta’s governance is driven by the FORT token, which is used for proposal voting, node staking, access fees, and gas on Forta Chain. With integrations live on Ink, Celo, Plume, and Balmy, and distribution partnerships in place with Conduit and Gelato, Forta is positioned to scale as the default security and compliance engine for the next generation of modular blockchain infrastructure. For a full primer on Forta, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.

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Introduction

As decentralized applications scale across sectors, the integrity of onchain activity has become a critical concern. Transaction-level threats like flash loan exploits, governance attacks, and scam contracts can undermine entire protocols in seconds, while regulatory scrutiny increasingly demands real-time compliance capabilities. These dual pressures are creating a new class of infrastructure: systems that screen, simulate, and intercept malicious or non-compliant activity before it executes.

Forta Network is at the forefront of this evolution. Originally launched as a decentralized monitoring protocol, Forta has expanded into a real-time security and compliance engine that evaluates millions of transactions per day. Its flagship product, Forta Firewall, applies AI-based simulation to assess risk pre-execution, blocking dangerous transactions with sub-10 millisecond latency and near-zero false positives. This enables rollups, protocols, and institutions to embed threat prevention and compliance screening directly into their transaction flow.

Whether stopping an exploit before it drains a lending pool or flagging wallet addresses for OFAC compliance, Forta’s infrastructure is rapidly becoming a foundational layer for secure, modular blockchain ecosystems.

Firewall Adoption and PerformanceExplosive Growth in Screening Volume

Forta’s screening infrastructure has seen exponential growth in adoption over the past quarter, reflecting both heightened security concerns and broader demand for real-time, transaction-level threat detection. By April 2025, Forta Firewall had screened around 11.5 million transactions since its November 2024 launch. By July 31, 2025, that number had surged to 271.8 million, marking a 2,263% increase in just three months. July alone accounted for approximately 114 million screened transactions, averaging 3.7 million per day.

This growth underscores Forta’s emergence as a core dependency for rollups, protocols, and institutional operators seeking to reduce onchain risk without sacrificing speed or composability. The system now delivers sub-60 millisecond screening latency per transaction, making it fast enough to integrate directly into the execution pipelines of high-throughput environments. Importantly, it achieves this performance while maintaining a greater than 99% exploit recall rate and a false positive rate below 0.0002%, minimizing disruptions to legitimate users.

Expansion Through Strategic Partners

Forta has deepened its integration into the RaaS stack by partnering with infrastructure providers such as Conduit, Zeeve, QuickNode, and, most recently, Gelato, which integrated Forta Firewall into the Gelato Marketplace on April 22, 2025. This option allows new rollups to add transaction screening with minimal configuration during deployment, which reduces onboarding friction and streamlines security provisioning for emerging chains.

Forta’s growth has also been accelerating through targeted integrations with emerging rollups and Layer-2 networks. On May 15, 2025, Forta Firewall was embedded into Celo’s new Ethereum Layer-2, enabling default transaction screening for threats and compliance violations across the network. The integration delivers protocol-level security without compromising speed or user experience.

On July 22, 2025, Forta launched on Ink, providing pre-execution threat detection for its DeFi platform. These partnerships follow earlier integrations with Plume and Mode, bringing Forta’s protective coverage to $700 million in total-value-locked (TVL), across the networks it secures.

Evolving Product Capabilities

Source: Forta Blog

Forta Network significantly expanded its product capabilities in 2025, extending beyond exploit detection to address a broader range of threats, including compliance requirements and infrastructure-level risks. These enhancements are designed to provide modular blockchains with a comprehensive security and monitoring stack that’s adaptable and operates in real time. Note: Many of the updates are not tied to specific version releases but reflect the expanded use and capabilities of the Firewall over the past few months.

Key product expansions include:

• Expanded Threat Detection: Forta Firewall now identifies phishing attacks, rug pulls, fake token scams, and other forms of social engineering, in addition to traditional exploit detection.
• Compliance Screening: The platform supports blacklist enforcement, including OFAC-sanctioned addresses and institution-specific risk lists, along with configurable filters for custom policy requirements.
• Arbitrum Inbox Protection: A new feature for the Arbitrum stack that strengthens rollup infrastructure by preventing malicious transactions from bypassing security layers via the Layer-1 contracts.
• Operational Risk Monitoring: Real-time alerts now cover protocol-level anomalies such as stablecoin depegging, bridge flow imbalances, and unusually large token movements.

Together, these enhancements position Forta as a more comprehensive threat intelligence engine for modular and rollup-centric blockchain ecosystems. The platform's ability to deliver actionable insights in real time across user-facing transactions and system-level infrastructure reflects a shift toward preemptive, embedded security as a design primitive in Web3.

FORT Token Expansion

The FORT token continues to gain traction across major global exchanges, enhancing market accessibility and liquidity for participants in the Forta ecosystem. FORT is now actively traded on platforms including Coinbase, Binance US, KuCoin, Bybit, and Gate.io, supporting robust price discovery and distribution across user segments.

Recent listings on Bithumb and Upbit mark a strategic milestone in Forta’s global expansion, underscoring its growing relevance in the Korean market. These additions highlight growing recognition of Forta’s role in onchain threat detection and compliance, as demand for protocol-level security increases across Asia’s maturing crypto markets.”

Closing Summary

As the rollup ecosystem fragments and modular architectures gain traction, real-time threat prevention is transitioning from a niche feature to a baseline requirement. Forta’s rapid growth in transaction screening volume, coupled with strategic integrations across L2s and rollup infrastructure, signals a shift in market expectations. Security is no longer optional or reactive; it is mandatory and preemptive. Recent integrations with Celo, Ink, and Plume underscore Forta’s expanding reach across high-growth networks and DeFi platforms. Meanwhile, new exchange listings on Bithumb and Upbit enhance global access to the FORT token, reinforcing its role as both a governance asset and utility layer for secure onchain activity. With sub-10 millisecond latency, high recall, and broad threat coverage, Forta is increasingly positioned as the default security and compliance layer for next-generation blockchain systems.